'Avengers: Endgame': Other Times Marvel Has Edited Trailer Shots to Fool Fans

The Avengers: Endgame Super Bowl trailer has generated some major conspiracy theories, ever since [...]

The Avengers: Endgame Super Bowl trailer has generated some major conspiracy theories, ever since eagle-eyed fans noticed shots that seem to have been edited to remove characters from the image. We've already broken down who the missing characters might be, but in the minds of some viewers, there's nothing to even speculate about.

Indeed, some Marvel Cinematic Universe fans don't believe that there's anything suspicious or unusual about the Avengers: Endgame Super Bowl spot scenes in question, believing that everything is exactly as it appears to be, onscreen. That's a fair argument to make, except that it ignores quite a bit of history regarding Marvel Studios editing key character shots out of their trailers:

Adding onto someone’s post, these are a few examples of how Marvel edits shots in their trailers to avoid spoilers! So perhaps some of the scenes in the Endgame trailer have certain aspects/characters edited out. Cheeky Marvel. [collage edited by me] from r/marvelstudios

As you can see above, there have been three clear examples of MCU Phase III movies using this character removal technique in trailers.

First in the photo collage making the rounds on Reddit is Thor: Ragnarok. In the awesome trailers set to Led Zepplin's "Immigrant Song" we saw Chris Hemsworth's Thor unleash his full Thunder god powers on the forces of Hela, with his eyes all ablaze with electricity. "Eyes," plural. In the actual movie, however, we found out that the trailer was covering up one of the biggest secrets: Hela cuts out one of Thor's eyes. It was an important detail that aligned Thor closer with his late father Odin - and it was probably too gruesome to display in a trailer for general audiences.

Captain America: Civil War used early trailers to tease the epic moment of conflict, as Captain America's faction of The Avengers team came face-to-face with Iron Man's faction. Those same trailers and promos also carefully tailored their footage to conceal a major surprise in the film: the debut of the MCU Spider-Man. Not only was Spidey removed from shots of Iron Man's team lining up for battle - the shot used in trailers went so far as to move War Machine closer to Black Widow, to conceal the space where Spider-Man should've been.

Finally, Avengers: Infinity War trailers are now infamous for the sheer amount of editing tricks they used to conceal details of the film from thirsty fans. The side-by-side comparison above only references the scene where Captain America facing off against Thanos digitally censored the full number of Infinity Stones the Mad Titan had collected up to that point. However, Thanos' collection of Infinity Stones were edited out of many shots in the Infinity War trailers - and whereas other MCU movies have edited characters out of shots, Infinity War also edited an entire team of characters into a "Battle of Waknda" shot that never even existed in the movie!

That's all to say: If you don't think these new Avengers: Endgame trailers are hiding something, the historical pattern of MCU movie promotion suggests differently.

Avengers: Infinity War is now available on home video. Upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8th, Avengers: Endgame on April 26th, and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.

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